


One Day is Many when Grief is Involved

by Webtrinsic



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Ahsoka Tano Needs a Hug, Ahsoka Tano-centric, Blood, Crying, Doubt, Extended Metaphors, Five Stages of Grief, Hurt Ahsoka Tano, Moral Lessons, Protective Anakin Skywalker, Quote: The Force works in mysterious ways, Stuck in time, The Force, The Force is kinda cruel, not timeline compliant, white sabers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:13:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26350210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Webtrinsic/pseuds/Webtrinsic
Summary: She is a phantom on an unmoving battlefield wondering what was so important for her to learn that the Force decided to use the cruelest form of tutelage possible.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano
Comments: 27
Kudos: 76





	One Day is Many when Grief is Involved

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Januxa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Januxa/gifts).
  * Translation into Deutsch available: [One Day is Many when Grief is Involved - Übersetzung](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29703147) by [Januxa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Januxa/pseuds/Januxa), [Webtrinsic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Webtrinsic/pseuds/Webtrinsic)



> i was listening to "always there" by radiarc and watching the different view of reality when i got this idea
> 
> also still want more hurt lekku in fics

The Force was not found in a single day. She knows this, everyone does. That doesn’t mean it is anymore understood than the day it’d been found(?). Both the Jedi and the Sith documented a few things, more than many were even allowed to read, a fact she knew frustrated many like her, especially her master.

Their thirst for knowledge kept them on the long path of rapids rivers that were blocked by rocks that only scarred them when they tried to cross. Her association with the Force and water continued to be correct yet it did nothing to deter the instinct to move with it, to keep running even if it meant encountering whatever else may be lurking within it as well.

All Padawans were forced to learn how to survive in a great deal of climates and what to do in the cases of natural disasters. 

Don’t go out to find the sea when it disappears, get to higher ground!

That is where her analogy falters-no, it is where she and any other victim of instinct falters. It is the ones like Obi-Wan, Master Windu, and Master Yoda who retreat to the high ground that aren’t swept away, she will never be that way for she would be step in step with her master, exploring lands normally weighted down; that have never actually been touched by the open air before they both would both be drowned.

It is now in an open battlefield that Ahsoka follows the instinct to follow the retreating tide because everything else is frozen and the force is the only thing moving even if it is fleeing.

There are blaster bolts suspended in mid air, the air around them warm but they don’t continue their paths. Every living soul is locked in place, even as she tugs at a nearby clone's arm it doesn’t move and it makes her wonder if her presence is even felt if the man could still feel anything at all.

It is rude and childish to wave her hands in front of her master’s face, his arms are pulled to the side of his torso, holding his lightsaber, a smirk only lightly curling up on one side of his face but his expression is vaguely neutral. 

The fact that he isn’t snapping and snatching her wrist to make her knock it off is the final straw that tells her she should get to the proverbial high ground. Her possibly selfish gut begs her to follow because if the force is trying to tell her something, wouldn’t it need to be present?  Maybe it did need her gentle prodding and her eager coaxing, or maybe this is it’s way of testing if she will overcome her intuition. Will she drown in omnipity with countless bodies around that could do nothing to save her? How was she supposed to know?

To the side of her master is her grandmaster, and Ahsoka is more than aware it is wishful thinking that Obi-Wan will grace her with his wisdom now. Except she already knows what he will say, again and again, the highground, and in this case that means to wait.

* * *

The sky might as well be a painting, for it didn’t move and the colors didn’t change from the blue and golden hue they were since the battle had begun. There is something that has changed she notes, holding to that fact with small calloused tangerine hands, the wind had stopped.

When their fight had begun it’d been blowing enough to make her master’s hair bristle and the corners of their robes pull into the air. It is such a small and grandiose fact that she cannot feel the former breeze or even discern the breaths brushing in and out of her.  Is this a cruel weapon? Had she somehow been spared a listless fate? And this planet alone was seemingly suspended in time. Had the serparatist risked, _sacrificed_ , their own men just to trap them in a contraption, device, a prison so advanced it was worth the casualties?

No, although it was a possibility Ahsoka was still quizzical of how such a project could have gone underway without the Jedi or the Senate finding out. Although terrifying it is surely a better option than the potential alternative.

It is possible that this is death. And if it is, it is not how she’d expected it. The galaxy had no dominant religion, neither did she, she also wasn’t quite sure there was anything more than the force but it didn’t stop the ponderings at night that if the afterlife one received was based on their lives...she couldn’t always assure herself she would find herself on the brighter side.

When all of this had begun, it had almost seemed simple, she’d been a child really, she still was. But now she knew that the war, politics, and good and bad were not such a black and white issue.  She had killed, had worked- _ still _ worked for a people that the galaxy were starting to doubt. That a small, vulnerable, and scared part of her was starting to doubt. Her decisions had gotten others killed and she had failed to save many before as well.

Her dreams sat in her sternum, glazing her heart, and behind her eyes she saw a pacing Akul in a cage. 

_ There is a wildness to you, young one. Seeds of the dark side planted by your Master. _

She knows and although she had been taught to fear it, the more time goes by she begins to accept it as fact. It is the Jedi’s teachings, not her masters, at least not his actual teachings, the words may come from his mouth but he and her both know she learned by example.  Although it is obvious to her that where she has come to accept the wildness within her, understood it, and knew how to unplant her feet from it’s inky roots, he did not and he bathed in the shame that followed.

Her options weren’t great, and it was either that or the one thing that seemingly she couldn’t entertain. How could the force be at play when it was absent? No, there must be something else at work, whether is be the work of seperatist or she’d lost her life in battle and this was the end.  Her person was void of injuries and she was almost sure her heart was beating too erratically to be measured, much like her breaths that also didn’t make a sound. It was either she was a fool in the afterlife, or a surviving party of a weapon that could reap the galaxy, it wasn’t the force or a lesson to be learned, and that she is certain, even when she knows she wouldn’t be in time.

* * *

She isn’t hungry and she doesn’t need to sleep. She tries but the sky is still bright and when she closes her eyes and settles herself in anyspot comfortable enough to lie down on but still in sight of her master, sleep evades her. She is tired mentally but not physically.

These thoughts are both logs on the fire and the flint to light it. Stress pulls her montrals tighter together, and her jaw is permanently set. Ahsoka takes to igniting her sabers and training, mystified as her green and yellow wafted through her enemies without cutting them at all. Almost as if their matter and impact disappeared with each slice.

Her inner Akul is raving and her teeth are barred, she feels herself snarling and hissing. Her arms straining and aching in pain as she repeats the motions of tearing through her adversaries to no avail.  They stay whole and they do not break into pieces, she is still on a planet and all too afraid to leave her master’s side. None of the comms go through and she is grateful she can’t fully affect the area surrounding her because the transparisteel would have cracked under her first with how hard she hit it.

“Kriff, Kriff, Kriff!” Her shouts slightly dull the pain that the action causes, and it’s laughable how much she wishes her Master was here to tell her off for her profanity. The only brightside to her cursing is the revelation that her words don’t come back to her like they usually do in this echoing mass of a ship.

Yes, she could still hear herself speak, it’s just that the sound didn’t reverberate back to her like it usually would in the ship's confines.

Her knuckles are tight because she has scoured the enemies ship as well and she is certain that this is not their doing. Her body is not somewhere else splayed on the battlefield and is not in the morgue so she must not be dead either.

Ahsoka has never known if she was allowed to be mad at the force, but she is now, she is enraged with it for trapping her this way. She understands there are lessons to be taught but must the method be so cruel? Must it drown her this way?

Day’s had passed and she still doesn’t understand, doesn’t understand what she is supposed to learn. And if her voice isn’t truly carrying than the words she is saying likely aren’t getting through the frozen men’s eardrums.

“Are you even listening?” She is forced to ask because of this reflection, dejected and enraged to the point the togruta is slamming the sides of her first against her mentors,  _ her big brothers _ , chest and screaming.

Tears are breaking her face apart, “Anakin snap out of it!” He doesn’t and she fights the urge to to see if slapping him would do anything but she couldn’t bare the thought of actually hurting him.

There is no force for her to expel her anger, while her sabers do nothing to tear the surrounding area apart. She had learned to accept her emotions but maybe that is the lesson the force is trying to teach, that anger couldn’t control her to the point of cruelty.  It doesn’t stop her from slamming her fist on the enemy ships engine a few times, even if it split her skin. The blood never fell, simply sticking and moving along her skin, the gravity warped to the point it was even going up her arms.

* * *

“I’ll be a better Padawan,” she tries to promise, her voice hoarse and rough, muffled by her master’s tunic as she buries her face in his chest. Maybe she is lucky there is nothing going on because there is no way she can be reprimanded for clinging to her master like a child.  It is also an easy task because he cannot respond so she isn’t embarrassed, but she’d live with that embarrassment, revel in it if it meant he’d hug her back and her waking nightmare would end.

“I won’t complain about the food in the mess,” _not outwardly at least_ , she warbles, bunching her hands in his shoulder, more tears jumping from her eyes when the fabric doesn’t even wrinkle or dampen under her touch.

“I’ll do whatever you tell me whenever you tell me too,” she does and doesn’t know why she’s pleading with her master specifically. In the end maybe it doesn’t matter either, the force is where she resides and he is also her home so she’ll bask in that because it is close enough.

Even as she lists promises she isn’t sure she can keep but is determined to try to otherwise, she is broken by his still chest and non-listening ears.

“I’ll-I’ll,” she doesn’t know what else she can promise but she’s sure it was anything, just as long as she wasn’t stuck in this abyss where she was a phantom spectator to a paused holo that’d never continue to play.

“Please,” the force is not done with it’s test, and her pleas go unheard, and like her blood her tears do not meld with his tunic’s fabric, they surround her.

* * *

Her back headtail is pressed against her master’s shin, and her knees are tucked up under her chin. The tears pooling at her chin moving down to her legs in a flow that doesn’t stop.

A small part of her berates that she hadn’t counted the days she’d been in this existence, then again how could she? The sky stayed the same and there was no setting or rising of any suns except the one in the sky that didn’t dare move.

Her resolve was admittedly weaker than she’d thought because she is here now, hugging to her master’s legs because it would be too draining to continue to stand and grip his chest.

The dirt doesn’t shift under her palms no matter how many times she runs her hand along it to try to smoothen it out for her body to lay. The pebbles and shrapnel are unforgiving on her lekku, they bleed with her repeated friction as she tosses and turns, a hand always across Anakin’s boot.

It is a miracle she doesn’t feel hunger when she can still feel pain. It is mockery that she is exhausted but not sleepy. 

Ahsoka has felt a great many of things, but this is more than any sadness she had ever felt because it'd begun to border on feeling like nothing at all. She is numb and sorrowful, knowing everytime she looks up at Anakin or Obi-Wan they will not speak.

The 501’st will no longer treat her like a little sister, and Rex would never laugh with her when Anakin did something stupid because Anakin would never do anything stupid ever again. She’d never see his smile fully on his face again, and she’d never be anything more than a small body on an unmoving battlefield too afraid to move away from the only person keeping her whole.

She is reminded of that backroad in some distant village, one she cannot remember the name, but she remembers the young Loth-Cat curled against a bigger unmoving Loth-Cat she assumed was it’s now deceased mother.  Ahsoka had met eyes with it for a second before she was forced to flee, upset she couldn’t help, but she imagines now she has the same look in her eyes. Dull and almost grey with displacement.

Maybe she is no longer a wild Akul on the hunt, rather a kitten Loth-Cat with no will to live, and no chance of moving away from the one they needed most to survive.

* * *

She brings herself to her feet after an uncountable amount of time, irritated at the near pockets of liquid, blood and tears, moving about her person. They move down to the sides of her boots as she does what she does best.

She wields her sabers, slowly but surely twirling them in her grip. She knows now that this is her existence, one she seemingly has no hand in doing anything to rectify or recreate.

It is another day where she breaks from her master’s side, finding her room on the Resolute and sitting on her bed where the dirt couldn’t get her. It is this instance where taking off her shoes becomes possible, but when she _calmly_ checks out of the transparisteel window the world has yet to move, she places the blood and teary boots in the refresher before clamoring up onto the bed.

Her legs cross and her hands splay out over her knees, and she does that which has never come so easy. She meditates not in the force but it is there, she can sense it now, and her hope makes it brighter, but it threatens to recede once more when she moves to follow.

_Do not follow the water,_ she listens and closes her eyes, finally able to feel her breath once again.

* * *

The Force had many lessons to teach in her solitude as she became one with herself and one with the universe, with the force itself.  Ahsoka is so caught in these lessons she leaves herself unaware of the sabers at her hips burning as the crystals dull from green and yellow to white.

She misses as suddenly gravity resurfaces and blood and salty tears fall down the refreshers drain. It is under no one's eyes that the holo in the briefing room cracks where her hand once slammed down on it.

In fact, it is the explosion of the enemy's ship that sends her to her feet, and when she looks back out over the battlefield there are no longer bolts in the air, the seppies and droids she’d tried to cut through were in pieces and the wind was blowing yet again.

_ “Ahsoka?”  _ There is his voice in her head and she falls to her knees, grinning and seemingly sobbing as her master tugs at their once sunken bond. He is wondering where she is, if she is safe, and also briefly wondering about the tension in his chest, and she gleams as she sends out she is okay, and soothes his aches with an apology he doesn’t understand.

_ “I missed you Skyguy,” _ her declaration is met with worry and she can feel him so intensely, almost as if he’s running in her head as he sprints to the ship. Obi-Wan’s signiniture is not far behind, and it’s enough to get her running through the halls without her shoes before she crashes none too gently into her master.

She knows she is truly okay when her enthusiastic hug is returned, tightly enough that it is hard to breathe which she ignores because if she’d learned to do it twice now, she could do it again.

Her shields are down, the doors open, more so than they’ve probably ever been. There is the slight suggestion from Obi-Wan to put them up but she can see he is just as curious as Anakin who is treading lightly at the edges but being extra careful not to blunder on in.

She is the same but she is also different. She is one with the force and she exposes the test and can feel the air expelled from her master’s lungs. It is the first time he has ever given her this much unchecked emotion, but his sympathy and love for his little sister is too much to just hand over to the force, so he gives it to her and she laughs somewhat happily into his chest.

She is slumping then, he can see scrapes along her lekku that need to be tended too, and her stomach is growling yet she is seemingly too tired to even move. Her fatigue is almost infectious but it’s his turn to be strong.  So Anakin doesn’t hesitate to lift his padawan into his arms, his brow quivers in the slightest bit of confusion when he notices her socked feet, but it is easily dismissed as they head to medbay. 

There are dozens upon dozens of reports to be filled because he doesn’t know anywhere near even close to half of what the hell had happened but the peace from his padawan is holding him like a liferaft at sea.

In that moment she chases so much darkness away, sends out so much acceptance that he actually feels okay. It is his subsequent shift that is keeping Obi-Wan quiet, the nod the man presents is a promise to handle the wreckage outside and rally the troops once again. The second message is clear.

_ Stay with your Padawan.  _

As if Anakin would go anywhere without her.

**Author's Note:**

> Snap: allisonw1122  
> Tumblr/twitter: webtrinsic1122  
> Insta:Webtrinsic


End file.
